


Let Love Suffice

by Chauntlucet



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-08
Updated: 2020-02-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:41:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22607947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chauntlucet/pseuds/Chauntlucet
Summary: While preparing to travel to London, Arabella discovers some old papers scattered amongst Jonathan's books
Relationships: Arabella Strange/Jonathan Strange
Comments: 7
Kudos: 20
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	Let Love Suffice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [betony](https://archiveofourown.org/users/betony/gifts).



The house was, as is the usual case upon such occasions, in utter chaos. The tasks of choosing what they were to take with them to begin their lives in London -- the matters of packing and moving about everything -- had taken the usually rather peaceful, quiet, dwelling of Mr. and Mrs. Strange and had turned it all rather upon its own head. None of which was really _helped_ by Strange’s particularly changeable temperament, at the moment seeming moreso now than ever.

“Now where is it….oh, I know I left it around here somewhere…” So came the string of uttered half-thoughts as the man in question went about crawling beneath his desk, eyes squinting against the dark and the odd angle of his head, as he patted his hand about in search. 

“Jonathan…” Arabella paused in the doorway, catching sight of her husband being nearly half-swallowed by a piece of furniture. “What are you doing?”

“Hrmmm? Oh! I--” the rest was suddenly cut off by a muffled thud and and barely bit back curse as Strange presumably knocked his head against the bottom of the desk. Slowly, carefully, he pulled himself free, casting a last, reproachful glance at the desk, before clearing his throat and continuing on. 

“Right.” He said as his gaze settled more fully onto Arabella, “I am searching for that book on Martin Pale I was reading last --”

Even as he spoke Arabella’s eyes traveled across her husband’s study, landing on a space upon the fireplce’s mantle, to the spine of a book that, yes, did indeed look recently familiar. She strode through the room, plucking the book from where it lay, propped up upon an old vase, and turned back to Jonathan holding it out towards him, her brows raised just slightly.

“...week” Jonathan finished, lamely. A rueful half-smile quirking at his lips, he shook his head and moved back to his feet to take the book from her. “Ah, Bell, what would I do without you?”

“Hopefully not find yourself devoured by your own furniture.” She responded lightly, her gaze traveling from her husband -- dust-covered and hair sticking up in all wild angles about his head -- to the rest of the room -- a mirror match to the man, with books strewn hap-hazardly over the floor, some in precarious looking piles, others lying spines-to-the-sky and open to whatever page Jonathan had left them on. There was a chest in the center of the floor, empty as of now, while all around papers and notes were strewn about, and even more books lay in a series of piles which seemed to suggest an ever-shifting nature. “Could you use some help in here?”

"No, no, I have this well in hand,I assure you."

"Which is why _The Life of Jacques Belasis_ is being used right now as a stand for your tea, yes?"

Jonathan glanced back over his shoulder, to his desk and the book in question. "Hrmmm...no, you're right. It is a job _much_ better suited for _A Study of the Habits of the Aurates…"_

"Jonathan!" But even despite the exasperation in her voice, Arabella struggled to fight off the way her lips kept twitching upward into a faint smile. 

Meanwhile, Jonathan himself merely smirked. A sigh soon followed, breaking the self-satisfaction so clearly drawn upon the man's face, and he sighed, walking back around his desk and removing his (by now, quite cold) tea from atop Belasis's biography. "Perhaps," he admitted, after a moment, I could use _some_ assistance."

"Well," Arabella said, her expression softening, "You know I am always willing to lend it." And so the two of them set to work.

It was as Arabella was sorting through and picking up a stack of papers in the far corner of the room that she'd found them. Jonathan's hand, and it was clear enough from the shape of them what they were. Her eyes just scanning over them, reading them, she could see the influences for what they were, bits of Coleridge and Blake. 

It wasn't so long ago from that year, when Jonathan had first proposed, and she'd turned him down -- temporarily, of course, only until he'd found an occupation for himself. When she'd said it she hadn't expected, of course, that the first thing he would attempt would be to find a destitute poetic genius to become patron to. it was clear that practicality was _not_ amongst his highest priorities. Still, where with others such a beginning might have made it clear she was not being taken seriously at all, with Jonathan it had been...different. He had thrown himself into the task with such eagerness, those first few weeks, he couldn't have been anything _but_ earnest. Atleast, while it had kept his interest. But she'd thought, when he'd given up on finding his poet, he had given up on the idea of _poetry_ altogether. Apparently she had been wrong. 

"Jonathan," Arabella said, holding out the stack of gathered poems towards him, "What are these?"

Jonathan glanced up, taking them from her.

He remembered them, of course. Still early on in his attempts to convince Arabella to have him. Apparently Shropshire was not the place to find Poets in need of Patronage. Well, no matter then. He could simply become a Poet himself then, and wouldn't that be even better? A fine thing to say, _"Poetry is my calling, Arabella, won't you be my muse?"_

That first day, even, well, _he_ had thought he'd started off well. That day he'd gone, reeling off line after line, finishing sonnet and ode alike. Who were these people who spoke of the struggles of the author? Why, to write was nothing at all! 

So, he thought until he came to write a poem _for Arabella._ It should have been simple enough, she was his very reason for doing this to begin with, after all! And yet…

He could still remember the tight knot forming between his shoulders as he sat there hunched over the sheet before him, pen in hand. How distracting that soreness was becoming, how distracting _everything_ was becoming, from the twitter birdsong just beyond his window to the creak of his chair beneath himself as he tried to shift into a more comfortable position again and again. He knew what he wanted to _say_ , could feel it, _had felt it_ so strongly for so long he couldn't remember what it was like not to feel like this. But the words would not come. 

_Let love suffice…_ He'd slashed out so many lines the poem looked as though it were _bleeding_ ink. Crumpled so many sheets and thrown them about the room it looked as though some very odd and very localized weather event had centered on his desk. Finally he'd decided to step away. Perhaps a ride would clear his mind. 

He'd run across her in the middle of it. Swung himself down from the saddle and bowed to her in an exaggerated manner that he knew would make her laugh. And so they walked together. They talked, he couldn't remember what it was they spoke of. Many things, really. Eventually she asked him the inevitable question.

 _"And how does your search for your poet go?"_ Arabella asked him, half in jest

Jonathan had attempted to dismiss the question, waving it off amicably. _"Oh, well you know how these things go…"_

In response, Arabella sighed. _"Jonathan,"_ her tone had become more serious then, " _is this what you want to be doing?"_

_"What do you mean?"_

_"Only, it is that poetry has never seemed of any particular interest of yours before. Now, if it does make you happy, then I will support you, weather you are a poet, a farmer or you decide to spend the rest of your days collecting fossils at Lyme Regis--"_

_"Fossils, you say?"_ And Jonathan gave her a look that might have been teasing, or might have been absolutely serious. 

_"Jonathan! I am serious! I need you to understand, I do not want you to force yourself into something because you believe it will please me!"_

And of course he understood her, or said he did at the least. As they'd parted ways and he set off on his ride home again, he considered their earlier conversation. 

He never did return to that poem, hadn't set eyes on it since. Even now, as he paged through the pages Arabella had handed him he couldn't find it. _Let love suffice…_

"Oh," Jonathan murmured in response, returning to the present to answer his wife's question,"Only some old memories." And with those words he set the pages aside. He supposed it did not matter now, where that one poem had gotten to anyway. _That_ had never really been his aim to begin with. 


End file.
